Bulgaria’s lion has never roared, hunted, or slept in the sun. It has lived quietly in wallets and cash registers, paid for coffee and bus tickets, and been traded and gifted for over a century. On January 1, 2026, Bulgaria’s currency, the lev (meaning lion), started to quietly step aside, making room for the euro. The lion is not metaphorical but linguistic and traces its lineage to a foreign coin that once wandered freely across Europe. So how did currencies get their names, and what happens when a currency with centuries of memories is replaced by one designed to have none?

A lot more than just swapping notes in the bank. Governments allow for a legal transition period where both old and new currencies are legal tender. Banks will exchange old currency for the new one for a defined period of time, and all existing contracts, mortgages, loans, and salaries are automatically changed at a fixed conversion rate.

And yet, when a currency disappears, something more than paper and metal goes with it because money carries memory. Gradually, old leva will be removed from circulation in Bulgaria, and businesses will stop accepting them. Some leva will survive and become collectibles or museum artifacts; others might be kept as family keepsakes, slipped between pages of a book, or tucked into drawers.

What disappears isn’t just a unit of value but a shared reference point. Currency is how people learned prices, measured time, remembered inflation, or recalled what things used to cost. The Bulgarian lion was never Bulgarian to begin with.

Bulgaria’s lev got its name from the Dutch leeuwendaalder—the lion dollar—a large silver coin minted in the 16th and 17th centuries by the Dutch Republic. Reliable in weight and purity, it spread through trade routes in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. In the Balkans, locals named the coin after what they saw: a lion. When Bulgaria emerged as a modern state in the late 19th century, it chose "lev" as its official currency name, resurrecting a coin that had already been obsolete for generations.

The English word "dollar" descends from the German "thaler," another large silver coin named for the Joachimsthal Valley in what is now the Czech Republic. Spanish colonial pesos, Brazilian reais, and later the US dollar all emerged from this same family of heavy, trusted silver coins. When the United States adopted the dollar in 1792, it was choosing a familiar international standard—not inventing a national one. Today, more than 20 countries—from Canada to Australia and Singapore to Belize—share the same currency name.

Currency names spread the way habits do: through convenience, trust, and repetition. Their names might be in different languages, but they share the same story. The Hungarian forint comes from the Italian city of Florence; Hungarian medieval kings loved Florentine gold coins so much, they adopted the name. Samoa’s tālā is simply a Polynesian adaptation of dollar.

Many currencies remember what money used to be and the systems that created them. In Ghana, the cedi is named after cowrie shells because that is what was used before coins. In Laos, the kip refers to a bar of silver. Myanmar’s kyat and Thailand’s baht both come from ancient units of weight, back when money used to be measured before it was counted. Ethiopia’s birr literally means silver in Amharic.

Some countries chose names that reflect independence rather than trade. Zambia and Malawi’s kwacha (meaning dawn) marked the start of self-rule. South Africa’s rand comes from the Witwatersrand, the gold-rich ridge that reshaped the country’s economy. Poland’s złoty (meaning golden) asserted national heritage after years of foreign domination.

Many modern currencies turn out to be the same thing in disguise. The Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, and Korean won are just pronounced differently but reference the arrival of round coins in the 19th century. The Indian rupee and its “cousin,” the Maldivian rufiyaa, come from the Sanskrit word meaning “wrought silver.” All different alphabets, but the same logic.

Most currencies come from historical trade practices, weights, and materials used to make coins. The peso used in Mexico, the Philippines, and much of Latin America simply means "weight," i.e., the weight of silver coins. Other Latin American currency names honor sun gods, sacred birds, indigenous leaders, and explorers: Peru’s sol, Guatemala’s quetzal, Honduras’s lempira, and Paraguay’s guaraní. They are acts of remembrance.

The UK pound comes from “libra pondo” in Latin, meaning a “pound in weight,” referring to a pound of silver. Across Africa and the Middle East, however, many former British colonies—including Egypt and Sudan—still use the pound. Not out of nostalgia, but because changing a currency name is harder than changing a flag. Familiarity has weight.

When the euro was introduced into circulation on January 1, 2002, it replaced 12 national currencies; the largest cash changeover. However, it was designed to break this lineage to symbolize European unity. Its name is abstract, geographic, and deliberately empty. No animals. No rulers. No weights. No images tied to a single nation’s past. It is money meant to belong everywhere—and therefore nowhere.

Yet even where the euro has replaced national currencies, the old names persist in speech. Italians still calculate in lira. Germans still convert to marks. The currencies vanish from wallets but linger in memory.

The lev is older than Bulgaria as a modern state. Older than paper money. Older than nationalism. It is a reminder that Europe’s economic unity began not with treaties, but with merchants trusting the weight of silver stamped with a lion. When Bulgaria adopts the euro fully, the lev will likely do the same—retreating from circulation but surviving in language, nostalgia, and price comparisons whispered under breath.